


STARMAN: Beginnings and Endings

by csyphrett



Series: Starman [1]
Category: Starman
Genre: Gen, space invasion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5635804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csyphrett/pseuds/csyphrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ste'e A'st'n P'l't finds himself stranded on Earth after the destruction of his home planet. After fifty years, he has to defend his new home from the same menace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	STARMAN: Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings and Endings  
1  
Ste’e A’st’n P’l’t looked at the various screens floating around his work place. They  
all told the same story. A massive force was on the way to his planet.

He wondered what they wanted. His race had not left the surface in some time. Their  
colonies had been set free to run their own destinies decades ago. The silence to the  
communication attempts were worrying.

P’l’t put the worry away. He had his project to get done if the world didn’t stop the  
next sunside.

He felt that he had the solution to his problem in his grasp. He just had to adjust the  
lens to hook it to its mate on the other side of the world.

If he succeeded on this test run, he might have the ability to create wormholes. He  
could revolutionize transportation as they knew it.

If only those ships weren’t in their space. That was a worry he didn’t need at the  
moment.

Fine tuning his project was a delicate thing. An emergency was a distraction he didn’t  
need. Where was the Space Agency?

P’l’t put everything but his work out of his mind. He had to get this right. He didn’t  
want his test subject to be shredded by the forces he was unlocking. It had to be safe  
to use the first time, every time.

As he worked, his screens returned to no signal yellow. He had his machine apart and  
an analyzer in his hand. He finished putting it back together before he noticed that the  
news feeds were down.

He paused to wonder why as he ran his final tests. Something should be playing on  
his screens. The only reason they wouldn’t be was the absence of satellite linkages.

There was no way all of them could go down at the same time.

He pulled his pod from his coveralls pocket. It declared that it had no signal either.

What was going on?

He had to call Sier Go’dm’n Ch’ef to tell him he was ready to field test his project.

How was he going to do that with the signal down?

P’l’t decided that he could skim over and talk to the sapient in person. Maybe the  
satellite problem would be fixed by the time he got back to his lab.

He wondered what was going on as he pulled on his jacket over his coveralls. He  
made sure that he had his clearance provider and chip for his vehicle before he  
opened the door and headed toward the front of the building.

If this test went well, his lifetime would allow him plenty of opportunity. He could  
be setting up transport lenses through the commonwealth. He would be able to go  
places he had only read about in light magazines.

He stepped out of the building, looking across the parking lot to his elliptical  
skimmer. An explosion from high above made him duck and look around. What was  
going on?

A fighter from T’sla’s early space days crashed into the lot. The explosion sent P’l’t’s  
skimmer up in a geyser of broken parts. He had time to note that part of the aircraft’s  
body had been missing like a giant’s bite mark before it evaporated the graphite  
covering of the open space into a crater.

Ste’e looked up. He frowned at the spacecraft filling the sky. It looked like the force  
from space had arrived. The planet’s defense forces didn’t seem to be making a dent.  
He decided that he needed cover before something else dropped out of the sky.

He jogged back to his lab building. He didn’t know how much of an impact it could  
take, but the upper two floors should be able to take a fighter dropping on it.

He hoped it could.

His area sat on the first floor at the back of the building. There was one emergency  
exit back there, but everything else was solid. Once he was under cover, he could wait  
this out.

A ripping sound caused him to pause at the door. He looked over his narrow shoulder  
with his lemon-sized green eyes. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The ground had formed a column heading into space. Parts of structures, people,  
anything caught in the beam went with it. The air moved into the beam as a wind  
pulling anything in its way as it went.

The planet was vanishing as he watched.

What did he do about it?

There was nothing he could do. He might be able to save himself if he was lucky and  
fast enough.

He wished he had more controlled conditions to do his test run.

At least his lab had its own power. The local network had probably been disrupted by  
that beam of energy.

He speculated on the hows of what he had seen as he powered up his lens and copied  
everything he could from the experimental data, and the news feeds his disc had  
stored. He turned the lens to the nearest inhabited colonized planet. Someone had to  
warn them. He compensated for not having a lens at the other end as well as he could.  
It wasn’t safe, but staying where he was didn’t seem that safe either.

He cranked the power up to maximum. He didn’t have a lot of time the way that beam  
drew everything up inside it. The foundations for his lab might be going right now.  
He had to get out of there.

The air split apart to reveal a scene of red skies and black trees. He nodded. It looked  
safer than where he was.

Once he was across, he could get to the authorities and tell them what he had seen.  
Someone had to avenge his planet. Someone had to stop those monsters.

He put the info chip in a case and put it in his pocket. He would have that to show the  
law when he found them. He put one foot over the threshold.

The building shook. He looked up. Part of it must have been caught in that beam. He  
had to go now if he wanted to live.

The sky had changed blue and gold plants waved on the other side of the wormhole.  
He couldn’t step back to change the focus back. He had to go forward. He stepped  
across and hoped nothing over there would kill him.

He stepped out of the air and into the field. His skin burned. He looked up at the sky.  
The sun was yellow and too hot and bright. Where was he? None of the colonies had  
this makeup.

Something made a noise at him. He looked around. A sapient pointed something at  
him. He froze as he listened to it jabber.

He decided the best thing he could do was wait. Obviously the creature was trying to  
communicate with him. How did he communicate back with it?

He wished the sun wasn’t so bright. It hurt his eyes.

The sapient looked at him in horror. He supposed it was horror. He frowned. He  
hadn’t moved. Why was the native afraid?

One of its limbs pointed at him. Then it touched the native’s head at the very top. P’l’t  
did the same thing. He felt something there that shouldn’t be there. He pulled his  
hand down. Fire danced on its surface. He stared at it. Why didn’t it hurt?

The native paused at the sight of its alien visitor staring at the fire. Shouldn’t it be  
screaming? Why did it just stand there? Had it lost its mind back on the mother ship?

P’l’t wondered why his head was on fire and why it didn’t seem to bother him. Could  
this be some kind of unforeseen side effect from the wormhole? Maybe it was the  
light?

He turned to look at the wormhole. He saw his lab on the other side. Maybe he had  
time to get back over there and reset things. He saw the wall start to crumble. He  
realized he had made a horrible mistake.

As long as the wormhole was active, there was a chance that the beam would start  
pulling pieces from this other planet. He should have foreseen that. He had just  
assumed that the wormhole would shut down as soon as he stepped through.

How could he stop it now?

The sapient walked over beside him, fighting the pull of the air going through the  
door. He looked at the other side crumbling. He raised his weapon and fired into the  
hole in the air. The scene snapped off.

P’l’t looked down at him. The sapient made a gesture that said it looked like the thing  
to do at the time.

P’l’t made the same gesture back.

2  
Ste’e A’st’n P’l’t floated above the Earth, hovering outside the stratosphere. Earth  
had given him this ability and he loved it the most of everything he had gained since  
his arrival fifty years ago.

He nodded to himself when he saw the smaller craft approaching. They were there to  
blind the Earth, and defend the mothership. He recognized them from the feeds he had  
recorded so long ago.

That had taken some engineering to accomplish but he had been able to do a lot with  
the vacuum tubes used then. Translating the media had been a lot easier than building  
the device to play it.

Now here they were again.

A telescope flown beyond Pluto had filmed the arrivals and sent the pictures back as  
fast as the technology allowed. Then it went dead.

P’l’t didn’t know why they had waited so long before moving to the only planet with  
life on it. He supposed that part of the fleet had been somewhere else and what the  
satellite had seen were scouts.

Now months later, they were advancing on Earth. He had no doubt what would  
happen when they arrived. They would do to the Earth what they did to T’sla. Nine  
billion people would be nothing more than converted matter with the rest of their  
planet. The solar system would have planets adjusting their orbits, if not crashing into  
each other with the third planet missing. The moon would certainly break orbit and  
head out into the system to wreak havoc on anything that got in its way.

Now here he stood alone as he had before he had accidentally crossed the threshold  
to Earth and met the Johnsons. Only now he wasn’t afraid. The yellow sun had  
granted him some kind of power due to its intensity. It allowed him to do things he  
had only dreamt of doing when he first started working on the space gate, and its lens.

Humans were not the peaceful people his had been. They were cantankerous, greedy,  
and hateful. They were also brave, charitable, and compassionate. He didn’t  
understand that duel nature even after spending fifty years among them. They  
deserved better than being wiped out to the last man to feed some faceless monster.

And as long as he existed, he would give them that chance to grow into a species that  
could step out into space and do what they could to help others they came across just  
as he had helped them.

He supposed he was just as human in outlook as his adopted people. Just as he tried  
to teach them peace, they had taught him that violence is sometimes the only answer.

He definitely felt that as he watched the invaders drift closer.

Violence was the only answer for dealing with the monsters he watched. Did they see  
him? What did they think of a sapient floating in space without a suit, or propulsion  
unit? What would they do next?

Delta shaped fighters came in. They powered up weapons in their noses. Some of  
them split off to attack satellites while some veered toward him.

He propelled himself forward, his inner fire forming a halo around his head as he  
called for more speed. He massed his body so that it was as hard as a diamond. He hit  
the shield of the first fighter and blasted through it. The pilot had a chance to realize  
that he was going to hit a living missile right before the sapient crashed through a  
wall and out the other side with engines parts trailing behind him. The fighter fell  
toward Earth, heating up as it hit the atmosphere.

P’l’t kept going. He might have turned to catch the ship in any other circumstances.  
He might have turned if it were any other enemy.

He let it burn as it headed for the ground.

He hit the second fighter and ripped it out of shape. The thing spun, weapon firing.  
He flew behind the craft as its guns tried to suck in anything solid in front of it.  
It holed some of its fellow fliers before the spin stopped.

P’l’t gripped the tail of the thing. He smashed out the active engine so that he had a  
weapon he could use against his enemy.

He pointed the fighter at the looming juggernaut of a mother ship. He flew directly  
at the craft. He didn’t see any effects as he flew through the fighter screen. The pilot  
seemed aware of what was going to happen, but refused to shoot at his fellow planet  
pirates.

P’l’t would never had thought of such camaraderie among them. He supposed it came  
as a result of living together in a fleet devoted to killing any other species you came  
across.

A small defense gun from the mother ship fired. The fighter was converted to a tube  
of matter that ran toward the larger craft. It disappeared inside the gun.

A much bigger gun formed the belly of the beast. He judged that it was as big as a  
skyscraper like the Empire State Building. The rest of the ship spread out around that  
opening like a giant arrowhead.

That gun couldn’t be allowed to fire on Earth. That was what had destroyed Tesla. He  
wouldn’t allow it to destroy any other planet.

The only way to stop it was to destroy the firing mechanisms as far as he could see.

P’l’t poured on the speed, smashing through fighters who got in his way as he went.  
Careening wrecks added to the confusion he wanted to create as he charged on. He  
had to destroy that gun before the crew made it ready to fire on the planet. One hit  
would be enough to destroy enough surface to make the planet uninhabitable by  
humans.

He flew into the barrel of the planet killer. He began ripping the walls apart as he  
headed for the end where the actual effect would be started and power the drawing  
power of the gun. He had to get there and destroy the contact points, and anything  
else that turned the gun on.

He smashed through the wiring and piping that fed energy to the planet killing effect.  
He headed for the engineering deck. Any of the armored sentients that got in his way  
were smashed aside as he powered through the bulkhead doors to the vast space  
that housed everything that kept the juggernaut moving.

Armed warriors moved to stop him with those matter erasing guns. He smashed  
through the first squad as an afterthought as he hit the area that powered the rest of  
the ship. Divots appeared in the machinery as they tried to stop him. He ripped a  
coupling out of a wall so that fuel hit the air and exploded.

P’l’t survived the explosion throwing him through a wall. He might have done the  
job, but he couldn’t feel his right arm and leg. He looked down and saw that they  
were gone and fire had replaced them.

He wondered how long he had left. The missing limbs would grow back if he decided  
to give up and return to Earth with the job half done.

He concentrated long enough to form a slight covering over the flames. He had to  
finish wrecking the ship if he wanted to save Earth.

The others would have to deal with the fighters, and any of the fleet that didn’t  
engage in direct battle. He had to finish what he started.

That meant making sure the fire in the engineering deck spread elsewhere if he  
could do it.

P’l’t smashed back through the hole in the wall, knocking a trooper into the air before  
he could fire his rifle. One hand grabbed the piping coming out of the wall from the  
fuel tanks. A safety had engaged to keep the fire from spreading back to the main  
storage tanks.

He drove his right hand down into the pipe and through the seal. He followed it with  
the rest of his arm as he dug into the metal. He created a man-sized hole for the fuel  
to burn through as it entered the open air of the engineering deck.

He stood in the flames as the fuel burned back to the tanks deep in the bowels of the  
ship. He looked around at the armored soldiers taking aim at him. An explosion  
washed them away as the storage tanks blew apart.

P’l’t staggered forward. Space reached into the ship. Atmosphere pushed anything  
that wasn’t bolted to the deck, magnetically clamped down, or flying in front of it  
as it rushed out into space.

He looked down. His skin was gone. Fire rushed from his body as he watched it. He  
had to make himself a new skin before he burned himself up. The job was only half  
done.

As long as the mother ship had its fleet, it could be repaired and destroy other  
sentients wherever it roamed.

He concentrated on his body. Skin formed out of the air and wrapped around him. It  
glowed from the solar forces he commanded. He needed more than a patch job, but  
this was all he could do at the moment.

The walls shifted around him. He put it down to mental fatigue as he floated toward  
the door. He had to hasten the destruction of the thing before the crew found a way  
to stop him. The more he wrecked, the more they had to put back together.

The walls shifted again. He realized that it wasn’t a hallucination. Something was  
going on with the ship. He needed to get clear so he could figure out what was  
happening from the outside.

He started for the opening that used to be the rear bulkheads of the ship. He noted that  
the air was moving in the wrong direction as he flew toward the hole. He wondered  
what was going on.

He looked over his shoulder. He turned and flew toward the hole with all of his  
power.

The center of the ship collapsed. The walls crushed down on top of him as he fought  
to get clear. He started punching the walls. He lost ground as he fought his way  
toward freedom. He looked behind him. The ship collapsed on itself.

The invading fleet paused in its advance. Some of the ships had been too close.  
Their hulls lost patches as they retreated from the greedy hole that used to be their  
command ship. A retreat sounded and the aliens turned and started toward the  
edge of the Solar System.

The humans gathered up the technology left in their orbit. They knew Starman had  
been on the mother ship when it imploded. His body was nowhere to be seen in space.  
They headed back to the ground to give the bad news to the world.

Starman, the first hero to emerge, had fallen fighting to save the world from the  
invasion force.


End file.
